The Black Cat
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Oneshot. It's Halloween at Firehouse 51, and an unexpected intruder lies in wait.


The Black Cat

A/N: Just for a switch, something more fun and lighthearted this time. Happy Halloween!

"Another Halloween at 51," Mouch commented as everybody walked up the apparatus floor that morning.

"Not saying I'd rather be anywhere else _but_," Otis said, "we know what we have to look forward to today."

"Yeah, every nutjob in the whole city's going to be doing something stupid," Cruz added, "and then it'll be up to us to put it out."

"Who's going to be manning the candy bowl this year?" Herrmann asked.

"Usually that's Ambo's job," Casey said.

A familiar jingling sound was heard and a few seconds later, Pouch came running up to the firefighters, whining and throwing herself down in a ball against Severide's feet.

"Hey Pouch, what's the matter, girl?" he asked as he knelt down to pet her. Usually the pooch was content to laze around until a couple hours on shift and then make her rounds to see who would pet her, and then quietly blend in with whoever was sitting around the common room in between calls. But today, Pouch kept moving around like she couldn't get comfortable and rested her head against Kelly's boot, and she looked like she was almost shaking.

"She knows it's Halloween, animals know this kind of stuff, it makes them all nuts, like the full moon," Otis said.

"That's just a myth," Herrmann said.

"Are you kidding?" Mouch asked. Herrmann stopped and looked at him like he was crazy, Mouch returned the same look as he asked Christopher, "You really haven't noticed that we're busier during the full moon than any other time of the month?"

"What the hell are you talking about, Mouch?" Herrmann asked.

"Go back over the calendar, every week the moon gets full, we're swamped with more nutcases running around wreaking havoc on the city than any other week, that's when the hospitals get overflowed with the crazies," Mouch told them.

"So how come nobody else ever noticed it?" Cruz asked.

"We're here three days a week, did you ever ask First and Third Watch about it?" Mouch pointed out.

Everybody looked at each other and responded with a chorus of "No".

Pouch whimpered and nudged Kelly's leg with her head. He petted the back of her head and scratched behind her ears, instead of calming down Pouch started making a series of grunting noises similar to a beagle wailing.

"Well if you're right, and it is just because of the day, looks like it's going to be a long one," Severide told Otis.

Everybody headed to the locker room and got changed and got ready to start shift. And it wasn't long before the bells started going off.

* * *

As the day went on, nothing seemed to improve Pouch's demeanor, she spent all morning running from room to room in the station house, barking and whining, jumping every so often like she was going to pounce on something. The next time everybody came back and started to settle down after a call, she ran around the room, stopping suddenly and crouching down on her front paws with her butt up in the air and barked at something, then dashed over a few feet and did the same thing, then turned and ran to another part of the room entirely.

"What's the matter with this dog?" Casey asked.

"I don't know but whatever it is, she's getting worse," Kelly said, as Pouch's constant galloping and barking proved disruptive for Squad's poker game.

"When was the last time somebody walked this dog?" Casey asked.

Everybody looked around at one another.

"It's Mouch's turn," Otis said.

"Where's Mouch?" Casey asked.

Nobody had an answer.

"Never mind, I'll take her myself," Casey said as he got up and whistled for the dog, "Pouch, come here, girl."

Pouch came running and collided with his legs. Casey found her leash, hooked her up and walked down the apparatus floor.

* * *

Kelly saw Casey practically dragging Pouch back to 51 and went over to meet him.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know," Casey answered, "She doesn't want to go back to the firehouse, I don't know what's wrong with her."

Kelly watched as Pouch pulled back against the leash, and then finally just laid down on the sidewalk whimpering.

"She was fine until we got back to the block," Casey told Severide, "can you take over walking her and I'll talk to Boden about maybe taking her to the vet and see if they can find out what's wrong with her? She's about to jerk my wrist off."

"Sure," Kelly took the leash and tried to coax Pouch to get up and resume walking. It took a few tries for her to finally rise up on her legs, and she tried darting off in a different direction.

* * *

"The guys on First Watch mentioned Pouch was acting weird shortly before the shift change," Boden told Casey, "If it's something the vet can fix, I'm all for it."

"Okay," Casey nodded, "there might be a slight issue, Chief. We don't have a pet carrier for her, and the way she's acting I think two people would have to go so somebody can restrain her during the drive."

"Anybody in mind?" Boden asked.

"Kelly seems to be having the best luck with her so far," Casey said, "we'll keep our radios on and if worse comes to worst we'll have the vet keep her until we can come back for her."

Boden nodded, "Okay, call the vet and see if he can get her in today. I've never seen _any_ animal act like this."

* * *

The vet who'd supplied Pouch with all of her shots when 51 adopted her, and for some reason she either didn't remember this fact or didn't care as she was taken back to the same clinic, was a man in his late 50s who was and had been wheelchair bound for 20 years after getting his back broken in a bar fight. His bedside manner towards the animals in his clinic left a little to be desired from what Casey and Severide had seen while waiting to get in, but he seemed to be taking a kid glove approach to Pouch, who for the most part had stopped shaking and whimpering once they left the firehouse.

"Not exactly the first time I've seen an animal look forward to coming here," he said as he examined Pouch, who for the moment was content to lay flat on the table and wag her tail at him, "but she _does_ appear to be alright physically, of course we'd have to run some tests to make sure. How long has she been like this?"

"Just today as far as we know," Kelly said, "we work every third shift."

"But the guys from last shift did say she'd been acting weird before we came in today," Casey added.

"A friend of ours said it's because it's Halloween," Kelly said. "Does that really happen?"

The doctor turned and looked at the two lieutenants and commented, "You'd be surprised."

Kelly and Casey looked at each other for a second, then back at the vet.

"What about the full moon, is that true?" Kelly asked.

"Oh yeah," was his seasoned response.

"Well if that's what this _is_," Casey said, "is there anything you can give her?"

Pouch kicked her legs under her and adjusted her position and sighed as she pressed her mouth against the table. The vet scratched her behind the ear and told her, "You're a good girl", before addressing the firemen, "There's gotten to be a big demand for pet tranquilizers over the years, especially because of all those morons who shoot off fireworks at the 4th of July. I can give you something to calm her down, won't hurt her. Has she been like this before at Halloween?"

"We don't really know," Kelly said, "we've only had her a couple years and we weren't on shift last year."

By now Pouch was staring at the doctor with half open eyes that looked bloodshot, and started whining again.

"Something's definitely got her high strung," the vet said, "we'll see if we get her something to relax her."

"We appreciate it, Doctor," Casey said, "none of us have much experience with dogs, we've never seen something like this before."

* * *

Everybody was staring as the two lieutenants returned to 51, Kelly was carrying Pouch in his arms and she looked dead to the world.

"What the hell did that vet do?" Herrmann asked.

"Gave her some tranquilizers to calm her down, they took effect pretty quickly," Casey answered as Kelly carried her over to the couch in the common room and sat her down beside Mouch.

"Oh come on, what's the big idea?" he asked.

"Come on, Mouch, everybody knows you're her favorite," Kelly said teasingly.

A sudden noise got everybody's attention and they all looked around to figure out what it was. It took them a few seconds to realize that Pouch was snoring, deeply.

"You couldn't have put her in the kitchen?" Mouch asked.

He looked down at the dog who was laying on the other half of the couch like a lump, and after a minute commented, "She is _kind_ of cute asleep."

"At least things should be quieter now," Herrmann said.

"Don't bet on it," Boden said as he entered the room, "Ambo's out on a call, somebody go man the candy bowl out front, school's officially out and the kids will be by soon."

"I nominate Otis," Cruz pointed.

"Why me?"

"Both of you go," Boden told them.

"Yes, Chief," the two of them headed for the door.

"At least that should put an end to Pouch going crazy around here," Severide commented.

"And hopefully once Halloween's over she'll be back to normal," Casey added.

* * *

It had been late when everybody was finally able to go to bed and try to get some sleep. Casey had finally hit his bunk around 1 in the morning. He wasn't sure if he'd actually fallen asleep, or was still in the process of it, but he was facedown in his pillow and feeling very content and not wanting to get up for anything, when he felt four little feet on his back.

"Pouch," he grumbled without opening his eyes or turning over, "Go back to the common room, and bite Kelly on the way for letting you in here."

He felt the weight those four legs were sustaining, moving around as his back was walked on languidly.

"Pouch," Casey tiredly grunted, "go away."

The weight shifted as the feet stepped onto his backside, and continued downward but still showed no signs of getting off the bed or even the lieutenant for that matter anytime soon.

"Pouch," Casey forced his eyes open and turned his upper body to look at the dog, still not thinking to wonder how she'd gotten into his quarters when he'd shut the door before going to bed.

A startled yelp woke everybody else in the bunk room, and as they all got up one by one, they also found themselves in for a rude surprise. With every movement to get out of bed, high pitched screams rang out, which set off a chain reaction of the firemen screaming in response, trying to figure out what was going on. Severide stumbled out of his quarters and hit the lights, and he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Black cats, a dozen of them, two dozen of them maybe, racing around the room, rushing past each other and all of them trying to get away from the firemen who they had evidently gotten into bed with sometime during the night.

Casey all but fell out of the open door to his quarters and stopped in the doorway to the bunk room and looked on in awe.

"What the hell?" he asked.

All the noise inevitably brought Boden in to find out the same thing, and when he saw what it was, he was just as shocked as his men were.

"Where did they all come from?" Tony asked as they tried to grab the cats who ran around the room in circles and only stopped long enough to hiss and growl and try swatting each other and the men approaching them.

"Hey!" Casey grabbed hold of the fat black cat that had been walking on his spine, the thing was 20 pounds if it was an ounce, and it didn't take kindly to being jerked off its feet. It hissed at Casey and tried to claw him in the face.

* * *

"Where the hell did these cats all come from?" Boden asked once the commotion had started to die down.

"I don't know, but that must be what had Pouch on edge all day," Kelly said, "she must've known they were here and was trying to tell us."

"But we never saw anything, how could they have hid out that long?" Casey asked.

"And _where_ did they come from?" Cruz asked.

"And what are we going to do with them now?" Otis asked.

"Animal control won't be at work for two more hours," Boden said, "anybody got any suggestions?"

Otis raised his hand, "It's a long shot, Chief, but I might have one."

"Let's hear it."

"If any of these would happen to be somebody's pet," he said, "nobody's going to want to have to pay a fee to the animal shelter to get them back, and if anybody doesn't own them but would be looking for a pet, it'd be easier to just take them from here instead of going through the red tape at the shelter."

"So what do you propose?" Boden asked.

* * *

Firehouse 51 was alive the next morning with the hustling and bustling activity of firefighters trying to wrangle black cats for the people who had seen Otis's message on social media and come to see if any of the cats were theirs who had come up missing over the holiday. None of them had any collars, most of them didn't have any marks distinguishing them from each other, but somehow by some miracle, most of the people who showed up were able to identify one of the black cats as their own who'd suddenly disappeared a couple days ago. Some were scrawny, some were fat, some had shiny soft fur, others had stiffer, thicker, almost matted fur, others had little white patches either on their face, their chest or on their feet, some had fur so black they didn't appear to have any face, just two green eyes sticking out of a void. All of them tried to claw and kick and bite the firemen handling them, but some of them recognized their owners and went to them immediately with no fight.

Within an hour, most of the cats were claimed, though there were a few that nobody had recognized, and those, it had been decided, would be picked up by animal control, so that nobody accidentally walked off with somebody else's cat.

"That's most of them, Chief," Kelly said. It was an hour after shift change but everybody had stuck around to help with the pickups.

"That's a relief but I'd still like to know how the hell this happened," Wallace said.

"There he is, Mommy, there he is!" a 6-year-old boy said as he and his mother rushed up the apparatus floor. He went over to the fat black cat that showed itself into Casey's room and picked him up, "C'mon, Smokey, we're going home."

"I'm really sorry about this," the woman said to Boden.

"About what?" he asked.

"Tommy brought Smokey here a couple days ago and asked one of the firemen if they could keep him until after Halloween, so nobody would steal him."

"Now _why_ would anybody do that?" Boden asked, not implying whether the 'anybody' in question was someone who'd steal a cat, or a fireman who'd go over his head and okay such a thing.

"They steal them, they steal black cats and kill them," the little boy said as he used all his strength to carry the 20-pound cat who was content to make himself a dead weight in the child's arm.s

His mother shook her head and explained to Boden, "He'd heard how animal shelters won't adopt black cats out at Halloween because some people use them for animal sacrifices, and thought somebody would take Smokey."

"I see," Boden slowly nodded. Then he thought to ask the mother, "Did your son happen to mention this to anybody else with a black cat?"

"A few of his friends at school," she answered, and shook her head, "but I don't see how they could've done all this."

"Well, I am going to have to talk to one of my men tomorrow," Wallace told the mother, "but I know whoever it was, there's no way in hell they'd agree to take in 20 cats, so I still can't figure out where the rest of them all came from."

"Maybe that's just one of those things about Halloween we'll never be able to solve, Chief," Herrmann said.

Boden grunted something that almost sounded like a laugh, "_Trick_ or treat _indeeeeed_."

"Well one thing's for sure," Kelly said, "this is one Halloween nobody's going to forget."

The jingling of Mouch's tags rang through the room as she came bounding in and threw her butt up in the air and barked at the cats remaining. Some of them took off running, a few others stood their ground, backed up, raised their backs and hissed at her.

"Yeah, yeah, we know," Casey said as he picked Pouch up in his arm and petted her, "we should've listened to you. You knew something was wrong, didn't you?"

Pouch's tongue hung out of her mouth as she panted furiously, but to the firemen it looked as if she was grinning. She licked her chops and let out a particularly loud bark that sent the cats retreating.


End file.
